[BBLISA] DNS v. /etc/hosts with Oracle 10g RAC (on Solaris 10)

[Adam S. Moskowitz]

I'm trying to resolve a question about Oracle 10g RAC on Solaris 10 and
the use of /etc/hosts versus DNS. Specifically, I'm trying to find out
which mechanism we can use for name/address resolution for the RAC-
private interconnects (that is, the network connections reserved for
RAC's use between the nodes in the cluster). If it matters we are not
using any sort of clustering software except that which is part of 10g
RAC itself.

I have one set of folks saying "DNS ought to be fine"; another group is
saying "well, we've always used /etc/hosts, but we're willing to try
using DNS instead"; a third group is saying "Oracle says don't use DNS";
one person in the third group is even saying it's dangerous to put those
addresses in DNS. Who's a poor sysadmin to believe?

We know that using /etc/hosts will work, but for lots of reasons we'd
rather use DNS if at all possible. So, is anyone out there running
Oracle 10g RAC, on Solaris 10, using DNS for all name/address resolution?

Please, DO NOT respond with what ought to work, or speculations about
what might work, or even why one way is better than the other. The
*ONLY* answers I'm hoping to find are from folks who are using DNS as
described above.

OK, well, there's another answer I'd be interested to hear: If you're
running 10g RAC on Solaris 10 and you tried to use DNS, had it fail, and
then switched to using /etc/hosts and with *NO OTHER CHANGES* had it
start working.

Thanks,
AdamM